Tag Archives: Rice University

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Recap of Week 3

  By Rhodes Coffey • June 19, 2009

Our third week of the internship consisted of many hours dedicated to research and the refinement of our comprehensive report, which covers everything pertinent to our project. The outline for this report was expanded to encapsulate all of the issues that we need to address. The outline and report include topics on preventive conservation, our mission statement, what current solutions exist at the museum, why a better solution is needed, design objectives, design constraints, materials information, and finally the forces driving the design. These categories are a part of the engineering design process and will facilitate our transition to the design phase in the coming weeks.

On Tuesday, we attended our weekly meeting for the Community for Civic Engagement Summer Fellows. Dr. Kellie Butler, Director of the Office of Fellowships and Undergraduate Research, presented on available scholarships and fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students to travel and study abroad. More information can be found at the Rice Fellowships website.

Caroline Collective sponsored a blood drive Wednesday. All four of us donated blood to the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center, including two who had never donated before. On Thursday, we attended our Innovation Norway class in the Jones School of Business. During this class, we recapped the Rice Alliance Life Science Technology Venture Forum and Gray Hancock lectured on how to build an effective business plan. On Friday, we struggled to get our first paychecks. Unfortunately, two of us could not receive our checks and we got an insipid taste of bureaucracy.

Throughout the week, we worked diligently on researching rapid prototyping and 3D scanning as well as creating a materials database. Our materials database includes all of the vital characteristics of materials that we might utilize in our design including chemical properties, what it can and can’t go with, physical properties, cost, and other characteristics. We have also designed a second matrix that contains all of the materials of our pieces on one side and the potential materials of our solution on the other side. The chart includes positive and negative signs to designate what materials can be used together and what materials should be avoided together. Along with our comprehensive report, the materials research should enable us to enter the design phase with all tools and applicable information documented.

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Innovation Norway Course

  By Nicole Garcia • June 18, 2009

Today we attended the first lecture for the Innovation Norway course in entrepreneurship.

To start the course, we did a brief overview of the Rice Alliance Life Science Technology Ventures Forum. We discussed the best and the worst elevator pitches.

In general, the highest rated elevator pitches were all very personable and relatable. They each stated what the product was, who the target audience was, why their audience would want it, and finally they all clearly stated what they wanted as far as investors and money. The lowest rated speeches tended to be difficult to understand. This was either because they were too technical or simply poorly explained. Most of these forgot to mention what they wanted or how there product would be useful. One of the speeches even failed to mention what he sold. It is also interesting to note that the top and bottom three were the same for both the professional judges as well as the student judges.

This main lecture in this course went into detail about how to write a business plan. This included all of the topics that should be mentioned. In writing a business plan it is also important not only to write it for the well being of the company, but also to appeal to any possible financers. In making a business plan there are two big rules of thumb to follow. The first is that you must ensure credibility. This includes referrencing your entire business plan and making sure that all of your referrences are reliable and recent. Secondly no matter what business you are going into or how new your product is, you must always have competition. Competition, although it appears to be a bad thing, it is possibly one of the best things for your company. Competition shows that your idea and business  is a good one that there is already a need for what you are selling, only your business is going to make it better. Along with all the necessary mechanics of the business plan, these two rules of thumb contribute to making your business look attractive to financers as well as giving you a strong guide to where your company is and where it is going.

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Rice Alliance Life Science Technology Venture Forum Discussion Recap

  By Dr. Matthew Wettergreen • June 12, 2009

Our team recap of the Rice Alliance Life Science Technology Venture Forum generated several discussion points. Here’s a brief transcript that highlights the personal observations about the Technology Venture Forum.

What was one thing you learned from attending the Rice Alliance Life Science Technology Venture Forum?

Caleb Brown: Venture Capital (VC) firms fund companies at different stages of the growth process. Finding the right VC is important including knowing what types of deals they are interested in or ones they would not waste their time/capital on.

Rhodes Coffey: I learned what an angel is: a venture capitalist individual or group that supports start-ups that are in their very early stages of development. One such example is the Houston Angel Network that supports start-up companies.

What distinguished the good companies from the bad?

Kristi Day: One of the best companies was iShoe because I actually remember the name, what the company does, and the presentation. The name suggests what the product pertains to, so it’s not vague and forgettable. The presentation was easy to listen to, and kept my attention.

The worst? I don’t remember. I completely forgot the name, their product, their service, etc. They blended in, seemed the same as all the others.

Nicole Garcia: iShoe was definitely the best company that presented. She mentioned everything in a fast, clear and knowledgeable manner, as well as display the confidence in her presentation which represents the confidence that her company has in their product.

What new perspective did you gain about business plans/elevator pitches or creating a business?

Rhodes Coffey: New perspective about business plan/elevator pitch: Presentation matters more than content, time is of the essence, Present the most important things now and discuss later—capture the VC’s interest and elaborate later

Kristi Day: I realized that being able to relate to what they were talking about, or get a visual picture of how it works, was really important. If I had some type of mental picture of what it was or who would use it, I felt like I actually understood it to an extent.

Independent of a grasp over the technological aspects of a company, how could a pitch pique your interest?

Caleb Brown: Making slides that are visually appealing and accessible to audience members of all educational backgrounds—not just life sciences.

Kristi Day: If a clear, widespread need or demand for it was demonstrated. If it was unique and new and different, not just a slight improvement to something else.

Nicole Garcia: If the audience does not know anything about what you are selling, to make it more interesting you should simply cut the jargon.

After seeing these examples, if this summer’s program developed into a real company, what must be taken into account when pitching the company?

Caleb Brown: Let the audience know what sets your company apart from all other similar products on the market and how could your product impact the market.

Rhodes Coffey: Emphasize how this is a breakthrough technology and would gear to the available market. Discuss how this is better than previous technology, project how much money would be needed to make this profitable, discuss the marketing team in place and for the future, gear toward certain VC’s, emphasize how archaic and time-consuming the storage solutions are now and how our technology would change art conservation and storage for good.

Kristi Day: I think a wide application would need to be demonstrated. When I think of “museums” that doesn’t seem like a very large market. It would somehow have to be solving a problem that seemed like a big, widespread problem, or made it seem like people would really want it.

Nicole Garcia: For our specific project, I believe it would be best to make it a product that is needed. Emphasize the current problems in the museums, and the possible damage that no solution would lead to, as well as how this problem would effect everyone.

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Rice Alliance Life Science Technology Venture Forum

  By Dr. Matthew Wettergreen • June 11, 2009

Today we attended Rice Alliance’s Life Science Technology Venture Forum. The Life Science Technology Venture Forum provides a learning atmosphere where burgeoning companies could present a progress report to investors and to explore funding options. This is a prestigious event to be included in as Rice Alliance goes out of its way to select a top list of companies doing business in the sector as well as the leading venture capital firms. In the morning we saw business plans from companies like Microtransponder and Nano3D Biosciences. In the afternoon we saw multiple elevator pitches by companies like iShoe, Lono Medical Systems, Respiratory Research Inc. and Thrombovision.

The forum provided the EDAAC team a great opportunity to shift our focus from one of engineering and design to exercising our business minds. Both the business plan presentations and the elevator pitches were enlightening to the group and without a firm grasp of the technologies involved we were able to assess each presentation simply upon its merit as a presentation itself. The criteria that merged as most important was: presenter’s energy, focal points, flow, and opening/closing.

The highlight of the conference were the two keynote speakers: Leighton Read, MD of Alloy Ventures and in the afternoon Alex Suh of California Technology Ventures. Both provided perspectives paramount to getting in and out of the funding cycle provided by Venture Capital and also how to think like an entrepreneur.

Dr. Read’s presentation could have been entitled “How to run your business on the Cowboy Code” as he went through the steps of being a cowboy and tied that to business actions. His tip of “do what has to be done” provided a nice segue to discuss the importance of identifying and acting on trends, waves and constants in business services and investing. His note  “ride for the brand” addressed how loyalty can affect your career, both positively and negatively.

Alex Suh’s presentation peeled back the mystique of running a VC firm leaving a realistic cut-and-dry view of the relationship between startups and VCs. In his top ten list of “Reasons a VC says “no” to funding a company” he criticized the lack of preparation of some companies in both their business plans and background research. Several other points alluded to naivete that can cloud the projections of startups, for example, statements like “we will be profitable in two years” or “we don’t have competition we’re so superior” that demonstrate a lack of experience and realism.

We followed up the Forum with a frank discussion of what we learned and how we would act in a professional . Our personal observations were nothing surprising, mainly that companies spent too little time on their presentations which manifested itself in many ways. First, vague presentations left viewers with a dim idea of the strengths of the companies technology, market strengths and financial model. Overly technical presentations obscured the brilliance of the company, bewildering the audience and leaving them wondering why the company was superior. Too many presentations suffered from laconic or low-energy delivery. Our final conclusion was that speech writers should at least be consulted because there seems to be a low correlation between business acumen and presentation skills.

Return tomorrow for a recap discussion of our individual impressions of the Life Science Technology Venture Forum.

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Conservation Tour of MFAH

  By Rhodes Coffey • June 4, 2009

Today, we were given a tour of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) collection and storage areas by Wynne Phelan, MFAH Conservation Director, and Julie Bakke, Chief Registrar of the MFAH. They started the tour by showcasing a variety of pieces in the museum and explaining the conservation issues surrounding these pieces.

One of the things we learned was that the history of the piece’s treatment was often more important than the age of the piece. We also learned about the specific concerns for different materials. They talked about specific needs for the housing of each piece. Some of the main priorities in establishing housing are visibility of the piece, minimizing handling, stabilizing the piece inside the housing, and making efficient use of space in the storage facilities.

They also gave us a behind-the-scenes tour of some of the current storage facilities. The storage of most of the MFAH permanent collection takes place at an off-site facility. We will be touring this facility next week. In the storage areas, we were surprised to find such basic components as cardboard boxes and bubblewrap that were being used to protect priceless works of art. Many of the objects weren’t packed at all, but placed on crowded shelves. This really opened our eyes to the need for a new approach to housing artwork.

After finishing the tour, we were able to sit down with Wynne and Julie and have some of our specific questions answered so that we could get a better understanding of the goals of our project. We need to create housing solutions that will meet the needs of the artwork under all circumstances with the exception of when they are on display. We came away with a better vision of what our project is really aiming for.

One of the most exciting things about our day was having a chance to see some of the pieces that Wynne and Julie had selected as possiblities for us to work with. A few of those pieces are currently on display at the museum, while others are in storage. After our museum trip, we had a chance to sit down and discuss which pieces we should design housing for. Choosing the actual pieces that will be the basis for our project was an important step, and is really making the project start to come to life.

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Digital Workflow

  By Caleb Brown • June 3, 2009

As a multi-disciplinary project, we will be utilizing a digital workflow process that incorporates several online tools.  Within the digital workflow process, several websites will be employed to organize and publish our ongoing work. These tools will lead to the documentation of solidified knowledge or actions on our website. Our website will showcase all of the work that we complete along with daily posts about team-building activities and pertinent media.

The components of digital workflow that we will be utilizing for our project include:

(1) Communication will take form through skype or gmail. This communication is important for instant relay of information between team members. Skype, Gmail.


(2) Document storage will occur at dropbox and google documents. Document storage allows us to access various documents and research information from anywhere.
GetDropbox

(3) Digitial bookmarking will take place at delicious.com and we will be sending out pertinent links via digg.com. Delicious allows us a place to share the relevant information within the websites that we have accessed and found pertinent to our research. Digg allows us to share our research and progress with readers on the web.
Digg, delicious.com/edaac

(4) Picture storage will take place at flickr.com.
flickr.com/edaac

(5) video storage will take place at youtube.com and vimeo.com.
Youtube and Vimeo

(6) Scheduling, vital for meeting goals and deadlines, will be organized on google calendar.

(7) For team brainstorming, storage of information, and collaboration, a wiki page will be utilized via the wetpaint.com website.
Wetpaint

Digital workflow is a good tool for collaboration, efficient organization, and shared research. The goal of the digital workflow process is to more effectively manage our ideas and resources while also displaying our final results in a more visible spectrum to those interested conservators and engineers on the internet. We have chosen to use digital workflow because it will not only allow us to meet our project goals, but also to reach out to a public audience.

By documenting all of our steps in this endeavor, we are making it possible for others to reproduce our process in engineering design, teamwork, and a multi-disciplinary approach to problem-solving.